


Again, And Again

by thegreatandpowerfultoaster



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Alex Hawthorne Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 16:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21479284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreatandpowerfultoaster/pseuds/thegreatandpowerfultoaster
Summary: "You almost killed me!""You were just supposed to put the beacon down, not my fault you decided to hold it like a moron."(A Captain Hawthorne lives au)
Kudos: 34





	Again, And Again

She count see the way someone had leaped out of the way of her pod as she descended to the planet below, but Doctor Welles certainly did, judging from the surprised noise he made. 

"Well, that could have been very, _very_ bad. Was he holding the beacon instead of having just sat it down? Maybe I misjudged his intelligence. Hmm." 

She wants to tell him that he better not have misjudged this Hawthorne character, but her throat is still partched and scratchy. Instead she makes an angry face, because that seems like a good way to tell him how unhappy she is with this entire thing?

The pod opens, door sticking just a little. And she steps out, feeling shaky and wrong. She wonders for a moment, if she could still turn into goo at this point.

It feels like it.

Still, she fixes on a point just behind the fuzzy figure that's undeniably the aforementioned Captain Hawthorne. And then she coughs, and decides that it he isn't going to speak, she's going to.

"Marian Newton," she says, although it takes a minute and between rough swallows, sticks out her hand for him to shake. He states at it, and her as a whole with wide, wide eyes. She puts her hand down, and he finally decides to speak.

"You almost killed me!"

"You were just supposed to put the beacon down, not my fault you decided to hold it like a moron."

Speaking that much is simply torture. So she opts to not do it anymore, at least until someone can get her some water or something. 

"Whatever," Hawthorne scowls and brushes his blonde hair out of his eyes. "Let's just get back to my shop before one of those Spacers Choice weirdos decides to impound her." 

Marian has no clue what any of those words mean, especially together, but she nods anyways and follows Hawthorne as he starts to stride back down the hill. 

At first she stumbles, and she's not sure how well she's going to do at any of this. Maybe Hawthorne's supposed to be the gun and she's supposed to be the brains. That would make sense, right? What with her (former) budding career in...well, paperwork. 

Besides, her muscles have clearly atrophied somewhat in the last seventy years.

Huh. Seventy years. Maybe that ought to bother her more.

But chasing (hobbling in the vague direction of) Hawthorne through the tall golden grass and looking up at the rings above the planet, like a sunset in the middle of the afternoon sky, it's not such a daunting number.

He stops abrupty, and she comes close to slamming into his back, only avoiding it by falling into the grass and onto her stomach.

Hawthorne raises one finger to his lips, and sits like that for a minuite, Marian watching him from the grass. "Did you hear that?" He doesn't wait for her answer. "Canids. I'm not wasting bullets on them, just stay back and stay quiet and they won't go for you."

She pulls herself to her knees and presses herself against the rock wall the way he does, and scoots along it. 

She only gets a brief view of the things he called Canids, but they're colorful and snarling at nothing and bigger than any wolf or dog she'd ever seen, and so that is enough of a look for her. 

They go on like this for a while, until they reach a drop off into a cave.

"Damn, must've gotten turned around." 

Marian points down at the light pouring through the dark cave. Hawthorne nods. "Yeah." And then he looks at her for a moment, all squinty like before fishing a flask out of the pocket of his jacket and waves it at her. "Drink?"

Half the flasks contents are gone before she actually tastes it, spitting half of it back up. At least her throat feels wetter, even if it feels like it's being dissolved with something that's one part acid, one part dish soap and one part cough syrup. "What the hell is that?!"

He gives her a look. "Zero Gee energy drink." 

No. No. She has drank plenty of Zero Gee's in her time. And that is not fucking it. "I lived off that stuff in college, I think I'd know what it tastes like. That doesn't even taste like I should be within inhaling distance of it."

Hawthorne rolls his eyes. "It's the new formula, then. It tastes fine, just takes some getting used to. What were you trying to say, before?"

"The cave goes all the way through, so s'long as we're headed the right way, there's no reason to backtrack."

He looks at her, then down at the cave. "Okay. Do you think you can jump that far and not break a leg or something?" 

Marian can't help but scoff. "Please. I'll have you know rock climbing was a hobby of mine." Without more warning, Hawthorne takes that as an invitation to just dive down, rolling onto the cave floor. That had to hurt, right? Whether it did or not he gets right back up and starts to survey the area.

Suddenly the task is daunting. They lack a rope, or really any proper safety equipment. And this slope has not been specifically chosen for climbing. Not to mention her legs feeling like the bones in an don't even exist.

(Wait, should she check that she still has leg bones?)

Still she tentatively reaches out with one foot and finds what feels like a good place to put her weight. It's slow going, but she hasn't slipped yet. It takes what feels like hours to get down a fifteen foot wall, but Hawthorne is still waiting patiently at the bottom to give her both a report on the situation and snark.

"Wow, look at you. Expert climber. No wonder Welles woke you up. He doesn't need any genius scientists or renown engineers with you around."

Marian would scowl, again, and ask why he thinks he's so special since he's neither of those things, but the sudden relief of being back on a solid surface has winded her. 

"Just get us to your damn ship." 

"Sure thing, shouldn't be much more of a walk. C'mon." 


End file.
